Red Letter Date

So...
It was exactly one year ago, 28th October 2008, that I happened upon Other Ocean and bumped into 'Beep', the big boss lady at the Games Career Fair in the Old Truman Brewery in London.
That was a life changing day and everything on this blog started from that point.

Beep and some others are over in England right no, in London at the career fair again, looking for more talent, programmers, artists, producers - you name it. Both for here and for the Newfoundland studio.

A whole year since those friendly Canadians at Bight Games got me chatting - and I played Street Fighter 4 for the first time. A whole years since I first heard of Prince Edward Island and got excited about the prospect of moving and living on this awesome island.

Well - it's been eventful :)
We've since, rented our house out.
Paid out a ton of money to get rid of debts and ship all our stuff.
I spent 3 months away from Kath and Hayden.
Kath gave up her career as a teacher to become a housewife.
I started a new job and a new career.
We've met a tons of awesome new friends.
We've been camping, ate Oysters, Lobster and fish like never before.
Bought a car - with cash.
And had a new baby daughter.

And now I guess, that adventure may start again for someone else in London today if Beep employs them :)

LOL, good luck to them, it's been a difficult but thoroughly worthwhile trudge for us, and I don't regret a thing... except ever fixing my mortgage for 7 years.. .doh!

"Lets put a smile... on that face!"

So... those of you reading this blog know us very well.
And therefore you know how we love fancy dress.
Thus with Halloween around the corner we and being in a new place, we felt it was important to do things... well. Given our limited budget and timescale, I was determined to make Hayden be awesome at least if not ourselves. Yesterday he was invited to Locky's birthday party, which was Halloween themed. Canada... like the US... is a bit weird when it comes to Halloween.
What I mean by that is that people dress up as super heroes or faeries... or.. anything. More like New Year really. Although witches, ghouls and zombies are all aboot the place it seems that fancy dress is all a bit... well ... lame to be honest.
No gore. No... scaryness.
Hayden had wanted to be Joker for a while - it was my idea, but was only a suggestion to him after he saw The Dark Knight.
Probably shouldn't have let him watch The Dark Knight, I'm sure a ton of people out there think I'm steering him onto a murderous, violent lifestyle - what with all the lightsabre duals and pirate sword fights... and now I guess I've really gone and done it!
But hey, my philosophy on the matter is that he's intelligent enough to not become a 'complete' nutter.

Anyway.. he loved the film and thought Heath Ledger was a legend in it.. well I got that impression anyway :)

So he had the option of wearing his Clone Wars captain Rex outfit, or Vader and he was going to be Vader, but he heard that Conner was going to be Batman, so, in true Hayden style thought it'd be great to play the villain.
He therefore spent a full 6 hours.. in make up!.

He looked incredibly evil to be fair... just the way it should be at Halloween. I think he got into his role a bit too serious and started saying "Why so serious?" in a sinister voice.

At the party he was the only evil looking kid. He got respect - mostly from the adults, and then tried to scare Locky by stalking him into a corner - I explained that it was not very nice to scare Locky, but I'm afraid, bad father that I am, I was rather proud of his role play :)

I'm also glad he doesn't scare easily and I'm starting to think that the other parents around here think I'm an arse for letting him sword fight and choose villains like Darth Maul and The Joker as role models. I think it's cool ;), much better than Ned Flanders!

Bath time. This shot was taken before we tried to wash out his green hair.

Note - the nice clean water?

And this was taken after LOL.

He'll be reprising his role on Halloween for some Trick OR Treat - I may even take him on a bar crawl with me if Kath will let me :)

Strange Bird

Oh... not that one... that's just Carla!. ;)

I mean this one....

Does anyone know what it is?

Basting

Here's some pics of Taryn's first week on Earth... in no particular order.

First up, I decided that she'd been too wrapped up and cuddled. I looked back over my old website for Hayden and we were much 'harsher' with him, getting him to deal with the environment and people as soon as he popped out (perhaps it was because of the home birth?). And perhaps it's because she's a cute tiny little baby girl, that I just want to wrap her up and not let anything get near her?.

However that'll do us no good if she can't handle the unrelenting bitter cold that is reality.

I can't handle a screaming baby... and I know for a fact that they aren't delicate - you can throw them about and everything.. .they're quite robust! ;)

So off came the triple layers and swaddling blankets, and she was pulled from the cradling arms of her mummy - much to mummy's dislike :(

It's not like it was freezing in the house! But after a bit of initial moaning, she soon got used to it, and is now much more happy when her nappy gets changed... so I think it was worth it.

But she's so cute all wrapped up!!!

See?...

Her eyes were quite badly bruised as her elongated head was squeezed into existence. So it was nice to see her finally opening both eyes and focusing on things... me.... taking a picture... through a ring...

Here's T4Z... asleep, after happily looking around and making happy baby sounds from 10pm to 1am!

I took this picture, carefully lifted her up and took her upstairs, placed her in her crib and checked the time - 1:33am.

5 minutes later she got restless and demanded more food! I let Kath deal with that one :)

Aside from feeding more than any baby I've ever had! She sleeps more than any baby I've ever had! When she's not hungry or tired she spends her time being cute and gorgeous or exhaling a huge sigh of relief after making a horrid gurgling sound from her bottom!

So when she wasn't feeding or squeezing one out, the other night, we got to have a family game of Space Hulk :)

Monopoly is for the weak!

In the UK we were told by the 'authoritaa' that we could not bath Hayden until his umbilical cord had fallen off. But here in Canada they said 'go right ahead eh?'.
So she had her bath and absolutely LOVES the water...

After the bath, comes the basting. A good baste with Olive oil.. Filippo Berio Extra Virgin only for my girl. Same stuff used on Hayden, and he has wonderful skin.
Hayden enjoys helping on this bit.

Granddad Russell

So My Dad arrived on Wednesday afternoon, our first visitor from the UK :).
His original plan was to be here to help take Hayden when Kath went into labour, as she was due on the 23rd October - his week and a half early arrival should have sufficed.
Of course Taryn insisted on being earlier!

But at least now Hayden has his Granddad to play with and chat to, giving us some much needed time out. It's been difficult to try to deal with Taryn and involve Hayden or keep him busy. Our best solution was to sort of take one child each... then swap... then do stuff together... lather, rinse, repeat.
The difficulty is that Hayden is non-stop all day long, and Taryn awakes at 10pm!
So the ability to offload Hayden for a bit without offending him is awesome, and of course he's glad to have Granddad rather than us anyway! LOL

So glad in fact that I tried to get a picture of the two of them together after dad arrived, like 5 minutes after, but Hayden became a blur pulling dad upstairs to play with him...

This snap was the best I could manage!

A few hours later and a knackered Grand Father got to sit down for a bit and get the biggest cuddle in the world.

Taryn dressed for the occasion wearing her 'I Love Granddad' top. She got to meet him several hours after he arrived, when Hayden was finished showing him the house, his toys, his Lego, his Lego XBOX games, and reciting tales of adventure with his friends Locki, Conner, Obi-Wan, Anakin and Count Dooku!!?!!?

A couple of days have gone by now, and Hayden is happy to play upstairs and has no trouble helping change nappies and bath baby... because at the end of it he gets a present from Granddad.

It's all bribery really, but it's working... to a degree. Dad has bought so many toys for him, we felt it best that he drip feeds them over the stay here and that way we get Hayden to behave... hmmm...

Not sure if that will actually make things bad int he long run but.. regardless, in two weeks time Grandad Lee and Nanny Noodles visit, bringing with them probably double what dad brought - so either way the guy's going to get a ton of new presents.

It should all help to ease him into the fact that his cuddles and time now has to be shared a bit without leaving him resentful.

That's the plan anyway ?!?

Taryn got her first silver. A bracelet, that is engraved. She seemed pleased :)

T4Z

Our first trip our was for lunch on Saturday to Swiss Chalet :)

Here's a snap of her hair colour in natural light. We settled on Phoenix for her middle name because of this.

One... Billion Dollars!!.....

Awwwwwwwwwwww.......

Nooooggin..... Duuuude....

The nurse weighed her yesterday morning and she's climbing back to her birth weight, 7lb 4oz now. Probably a lot more since last morning, the amount she feeds, it's no wonder she has put the weight back on - a good thing.

Ooooz A Boo?

Begun... The Clone Wars have

H4X or T4Z?... T4Z or H4X?...